What Did You Expect? It Was Scotland You Were Watching, Not the Harlem Globetrotters

SCOTLAND beating Samoa 44-38: glass half-full or half-empty? We won, but, as students of “course and distance” data will tell you, a one-score win was just about par for the fixture. We ought to have won, we did win, but, it was not, as those who paid congnisance to recent meetings foretold, a comfortable win. However, I have seen Scotland, too-often, snatch defeat from the jaws of victory; yesterday we got the job done.

 Plus points: Darryl Marfo, (pictured left) and Jamie Bhatti when he came on, did well. Stuart McInally did brilliantly. Losing WP Nel was a huge blow, although Zander Fagerson's rapid growing-up continued when he came on. We will miss Nel, of course, I am wondering who will be called-in to replace him.

Ben Toolis was supreme at the touch lines, however, I have seen some immediate reaction pieces in which journalists have criticised his lack of bulk as a gain-line breaking lock.

(There is an old story, about Norman “Bites yer legs” Hunter of Leeds United, being sent back to his club from his first outing with the England Under-23 team, and a note to his cub coaches: “Hunter is too left-sided and one-footed, work on this please.”

He turned up for the next game, in which the Leeds trainer Les Cocker was, as ever at the time, acting as England trainer. He was pulled aside by Alf Ramsey who said: “What about my instruction to work on his over-reliance on his left foot.”

“Yes boss – that's the foot we are working on,” was the reply.)

The moral of using this story is – we should maybe be working on Ben's line-out work, which could become a hugely-potent weapon for us. The game plan Toony wants us to play does not call for lumbering locks trucking-up, but, for high-tempo, close-support off-loading rugby, forwards and backs as one.

Jonny Gray is still not back to where he can be, and where we want him to be. He needs a big game on Saturday. Ditto John Barclay and Ryan Wilson who both had quiet games, but, Hamish Watson, as ever, was immense.

Hoggie touches down the opening try on Saturday

Ali Price and Finn Russell had, by their standards, fairly-average games. They were quietly-efficient, without hitting the heights they are capable of reaching. Alex Dunbar looked what he is – short of match sharpness, while Huw Jones was great going forward, but not that impressive on the back foot. Both wingers did well, as did Hoggie at full-back.

It was good for Toony to get the new boys onto the park, and all did well when on there. It was a good run-out, but, we will need to find a couple of further gears for the All Blacks on Saturday.

Our defensive sets will need to be better on Saturday. As ever, our scramble defence was good, but, our first-up tackling was poor, this must be improved before the men in black turn up on Saturay.

Playing the free-flowing, high-tempo game Toony wishes us to calls for accuracy in execution, which wasn't always there against the Samoans, but, I am hopeful, with a further week of work, it will be better against the World Champions. Let's face it, it will need to be.

We are fortunate in that we operate from such a shallow player pool. We have a lot of club combinations operating together, thereby breeding familiarity. But, new calls, some finessing of moves has to be done at international level, and some of this work was being done on the field yesterday.

Scotland is a work-in-progress, New Zealand is the finished article, we should remember that for Saturday. Of course, we want to win as often as possible, but, we have never beaten the All Blacks, so we have no great expectations about our next game.

The Autumn Internationals are glorified friendlies – they matter to a certain extent, but, the games which really matter are those in the Six Nations and the World Cup. Toony will use the three games in this block to work towards the five games in the Spring, then on to 2019.

DODDIE Weir's battle against MND is capturing most of the relevant headlines just now. It's a terrible disease and, we all love the Big Man.

But, there are other charitable causes dear to this great game of ours, and while every penny we give to Doddie's cause goes to a good home, let us not forget rugby's other good causes.

One such organisation is Hearts and Balls, a purely Scottish-based rugby charity which has, since its formation in 1999, helped over 30 players whose lives have been devastated by rugby injuries.

Kenny Hamilton, whose recent GROGS speech proved so-popular when he kindly allowed me to use it for a couple of recent blog posts, is Chairman of Hearts and Balls, and, he is keen to see their work promoted in the wider rugby community. In the course of his GROGS speech, he had this to say about the charity he chairs:

“At the moment the working theory is that the law changes around breakdown mean that fewer players are actually tied into the breakdown area which is increasing the number of collisions (Or tackles) elsewhere. And, as you probably know tackles are where most injuries occur.

“I have the privilege of chairing the Hearts & Balls charity which is very much about rugby helping its own - and I know that your organisation has been very generous in the past and I thank you for it.

“It does not happen often, but when it does the effects can be life-changing and catastrophic. We currently have 13 long-term beneficiaries involved with the charity and have looked after more than 35 since coming into being about 18 years ago and have donated in excess of £1/2M to supporting individuals and their families.“I am proud to say that all of those involved in the charity are there because they want to contribute with no one receiving payment - in fact the opposite, it costs folk to be on our Board with travel to meetings and supporting events! I think the charity sums up the best about the values displayed in our sport.

“Our contributions come from individuals, organisations, schools and clubs who are aware or have witnessed the value of our work. And that connection with the grass roots is I believe our major asset. We are working on raising the awareness of the charity through a few events, an upgraded website (the current one in hopelessly out off date) and a H&B 7s team which will participate in Orkney and Jed 7s and hopefully the Glasgow 7s at Cartha next year.

“The idea behind this is to simply raise awareness of the charity’s existence and perhaps raise a little bit of money, but we know that when the need arises the Scottish rugby community will always respond. All you have to do is look at the response to the Doddie Weir Trust for recent evidence of this.